title: Vascular access catheters for chemotherapy. Long-term follow-up.
abstract: Accessible surface veins become increasingly difficult to find after repeated venepunctures. This unfortunate situation often arises in patients on long-term chemotherapy, and can lead to soft tissue infiltration of toxic agents with resultant necrosis. A solution to this problem is the placement of long term indwelling vascular access catheters. Three different catheters are here described-the Raimondi, the Hickman, and the Broviac. They have been used 90 times in 78 patients over the last 2 1/2 years. All have been very successful in terms of ease of insertion, inertness, lack of post-operative infection, and prolonged duration of function. Thirty-five patients were available for long-term follow-up (greater than 6 months). Results in these show a mean catheter life varying from three to five months with a very low incidence of septicaemia, even in the immunologically compromised patients. The advantages of the various catheters are compared.
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002408:Catheters, Indwelling / Q000009:adverse effects; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008134:Long-Term Care; D008875:Middle Aged; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D018805:Sepsis / Q000209:etiology; D013350:Subclavian Vein
chemical_list: D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations